Bernie Sanders: ‘It gives me no pleasure’ to call Trump a racist

Sen. Bernard Sanders blasted President Trump as a racist Monday during a speech honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

The Vermont independent told a crowd at the NAACP rally in Columbia, South Carolina, that the president is “intentionally” trying to divide Americans.

“Today we talk about justice and today we talk about racism, and I must tell you it gives me no pleasure to tell you that we now have a president of the United States who is a racist,” Mr. Sanders said.

“We have a president of the United States who has done something that no other president in modern history has done,” he said. “What a president is supposed to do is to bring us together. And we have a president intentionally, purposely trying to divide us up by the color of our skin, by our gender, by the country we came from, by our religion.”

This is far from the first time Mr. Sanders, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, has used such rhetoric to criticize the president. In November, he called Mr. Trump the “most racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted president in history.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden similarly used his MLK Day speech to slam Mr. Trump, telling aNational Action Network crowd that the president brought “folks out from under the rocks” and “legitimized” hate.